Andrew Rein at the Citizens Budget Commission said there is “logic for the measure” and it “might very well be useful,” but cautioned that it may need to be more specific.

For example, he asked, if all housing subsidies should be removed from the calculation, “Are you saying that you should figure out what the housing market would be in New York without NYCHA supporting it? Or rent-stabilized apartments?”

“There’s really a lot of complexity,” he said. “What is outlined here is a good start, but really, it would probably be much better if it were refined.”

“This is a prudent step, recognizing increasing costs due to the real economic landscape, and it's not unexpected,” said Patrick Orecki of the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonprofit fiscal watchdog. “The impact for both state and local taxpayers will be some higher costs to their budget for the coming year. For the state, these higher costs are on top of the looming multibillion budget gaps the state recognized last month. It all reinforces that the state needs to focus on restraining spending growth, and following through on its plans to build reserves.”

Decades of red-tape borne of archaic rules have fueled New York City’s seemingly perpetual housing crunch — delaying the construction of badly needed homes for as much as six years on average per project, a damning new report reveals.

The blistering assessment from the Citizens Budget Commission, a good government group, comes as rents have soared across the Big Apple and city leaders are once again confronting a shortage of apartments.

“The status quo risks New York’s ability to create the jobs that we need and the housing that we need,” said CBC head Andrew Rein.

“We have an affordability problem now and if we don’t build and fast-track more housing, that affordability problem will get worse,” he added.

“If our development process is such that it increases the cost of building every apartment by $67,000, then the housing that we do build is more expensive.”

With New York City mired in an urgent housing shortage, a new report found the city’s rezoning approval process takes dramatically longer than other major U.S. cities.

The typical rezoning proposal takes 2.5 years to wind its way through the approval process, according to a striking new analysis from the Citizens Budget Commission.

“Too often, the land use decision-making process through which the city reviews and approves changes has been an impediment to progress, restricting the city’s ability to spur job growth, develop housing, and become more resilient and sustainable,” the report states. “This is one reason why New York produces less housing on a per-capita basis than most other large cities, even those with more onerous planning and public review processes.”

On Twitter, Josh Gold, the senior director of public policy and communications at Uber, defended the note, said Uber was still a member of Congestion Pricing Now, and pointed out that the company could have specifically asked for FHVs to be exempt altogether, which is something the Citizens Budget Commission has floated.

The letter, released by Reinvent Albany and the Citizens Budget Commission, also pointed to some agencies that have sought metrics and deadlines for boosting government openness, including the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

"With the anniversary of this directive soon approaching, we ask that you issue an Executive Order requiring agencies to publish annual updates of their transparency plans and provide measures that allow the public to track their progress," the groups wrote in the letter.

“Much of the effort will be expended on other students less likely to be helped by the reduction,” Andrew S. Rein, the president of the Citizens Budget Commission, wrote in a letter to Hochul urging her to veto the bill. “There also will be unintended consequences as resources to reduce class sizes are shifted from other programs, which may well be more beneficial.”

The budget hawks at the Citizens Budget Commission indicated in their published testimony before Thursday’s hearing that the organization could support a taxi and FHV exemption, but nothing else. The organization has previously considered the question, and advised the MTA to consider this specific exemption in terms of congestion pricing’s goals of raising money, reducing traffic and improving air quality.

A report released Monday by the Citizens Budget Commission says that even as the MTA increases the amount of capital projects it contracts for each year, it will not be able to commit $28 billion of its $53 billion of currently planned projects by 2024.

The report added that 20% of the agency's critically important planned capital financing is unaffordable or at risk.

Thus far, the CBC report said, the MTA has not laid out a detailed, prospective multiyear plan that would allow the public to know which remaining projects are prioritized through 2024, when they are expected to be completed, the impact on the system's state of good repair, and the likelihood that the system's service would be able to be maintained and not deteriorate due to disrepair.

The CBC recommended the MTA prioritize projects to complete through 2024; publish a schedule of priority projects still outstanding from the current and prior plans; develop a comprehensive 2025-2029 plan; and work diligently to increase capacity and reduce capital costs.

"We also took a look at the financing," Ana Champeny, CBC's vice president for research, told The Bond Buyer. "There are a few points to be made about risk in terms of these sources that were identified for financing the capital plan.

"One point is that they are planning to spend to finance $11.5 billion of this with either MTA bonds or pay-go capital. Given the structural deficit in the operating budget, we have concerns about whether it's appropriate or fiscally prudent to take on additional capital spending or additional bonding that would increase debt service in the operating budget until they take the necessary steps to address that gap."

The CBC did note that there was positive movement on congestion pricing, which it deems as a crucial source of capital funding. The CBC has long supported congestion pricing to reduce traffic and emissions while generating revenue critical to support the MTA's 2020-2024 capital plan.

"Congestion pricing revenue is critical to supporting this capital plan," Champeny said.

If MTA doesn’t get the needed revenue, that could threaten the transit system to fall apart due to delayed or scrapped repairs, warned a report by the watchdog Citizens Budget Commission Tuesday.

“Much of the effort will be expended on other students less likely to be helped by the reduction,” Andrew S. Rein, the president of the Citizens Budget Commission, wrote in a letter to Hochul urging her to veto the bill. “There also will be unintended consequences as resources to reduce class sizes are shifted from other programs, which may well be more beneficial.”

“Absent significant changes in the fiscal fortunes of the MTA’s operating budget, it is fiscally unsound for the MTA to issue new debt whose debt service is not supportable due to the structural deficit,” CBC’s Ana Champeny and Alex Armlovich wrote in the report.